It Was 50 Years Ago Today - Sgt. Pepper!

It was on May 26, 1967 that The Beatles released an album that would go down in history... Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This past week has seen a flurry of commemorative activities surrounding the 50th anniversary of the album, its re-release on vinyl and CD not the least among them. Most impressive is how the recording again went straight to Number One, thereby making Sgt. Pepper the album to have spent the most weeks in the top spot in the UK. Twenty-seven weeks back then, and one week (so far) here in 2017! Pepper became third best-selling album of all time in the UK. 

The Sgt. Pepper band as depicted in the Yellow Submarine movie

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band won five Grammy awards in 1968, for Best Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Album Cover, Best Contemporary Performance, and Best Engineered Album. Then in 1993, Sgt. Pepper entered the Grammy Hall of Fame. Not bad, eh?

The album was critically lauded for its music production, songwriting, and graphic design. The overall "product", the music and its packaging, was so masterfully assembled - with no small contribution by producer George Martin, that everything about Sgt. Pepper is of historical importance to the industry. I suppose it wouldn't be fair to miss pointing out that The Beatles probably would never have dreamed up the album if it weren't for the Pet Sounds record by The Beach Boys (which I like a lot, but not nearly as much as Pepper). Pet Sounds was an inspiration and launch pad for The Beatles' LP that would surpass it. 

Rolling Stone magazine named Sgt. Pepper as number one on its list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. A well-deserved honour.

Cool fact: Sgt. Pepper was the very first album to include song lyrics! So we can thank the lads from Liverpool for that innovation... for decades since that disc, we've enjoyed printed lyrics with just about every recording on physical media. And of course, there are now scads of websites that provide online song lyrics, a service that might not even exist if it weren't for Sgt. Pepper.

Also of interest is that the Sgt. Pepper album was never performed live before an audience. The Beatles had retired from concert touring in '66 (the closest they came was in the animated film Yellow Submarine), so they went into the Pepper project knowing it would be an entirely studio production... so I guess they never had to consider "How will we do this live onstage?" Sooo much easier, right? Well, the album was no simple feat anyway, with all of the painstaking (700) hours spent on assembling the record, often using groundbreaking recording techniques. And they threw in a 40-piece orchestra to top it all off? Whew.

We all know this album inside and out, right? So I don't need to tread such familiar topics as the world famous iconic album cover of Sgt. Pepper. Suffice it to say, the artwork is still recognized as among the greatest of all time on every Top Album Covers list ever compiled. This and The Beatles' Abbey Road are always very high (like Top 5 or 10) in such rankings. I noticed Pepper was number one on many of the lists, and was baffled when it wasn't... sometimes bumped from top spot by a record cover showing a big yellow banana. What the what?

Sgt. Pepper is credited as among the earliest concept albums and art rock albums... so it was definitely instrumental (no pun intended) in the formation of the progressive rock genre. Not to mention it ushered in the era of the album. Singles took the backseat as LP (long-playing) recordings soared in popularity. So... Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd,and Rush (among others) thank you, Sgt. Pepper.

Roy Carr and Tony Tyler's "An Illustrated Record" of The Beatles,

well-thumbed but still in fine condition after nearly forty years on my shelf

Though the Sgt. Pepper album wasn't among my first Beatles purchases (read my side story here) when I was a youngster, I came to appreciate some of its songs on the radio (back when they actually played such important and timeless music). But a few years into my first musical foray, I did add a cassette tape of the Pepper album to my collection. 

I've always loved pretty much the entire album, with just a couple of exceptions... tunes that got on my nerves - or I just didn't understand them at the time. While I was crazy about several of the songs (especially Getting Better, Fixing A Hole, She's Leaving Home, and When I'm Sixty-Four), Within You Without You was just plain baffling to my young mind and ears. It seemed noisy and alien to me. But over the years, I've come to enjoy the relaxing, hypnotic qualities of the East Indian musical style. My more mature listening ear can now appreciate the exotic instruments and unorthodox yet entrancing qualities of the song. 

I've never taken to the brash, horn-driven Good Morning Good Morning. I'd say it's the weak link on the Sgt. Pepper album. Sure, George Harrison rips off some rockin' guitar licks, but the tempo feels clumsy at times, and the cheesy animal sound effects create a messy hodge-podge that I feel detracts from the song. But hey, that's just me. The rest of Sgt. Pepper is terrific, the assembly of music flowing perfectly from track to track, as any classic concept album should. And of course, there's the legendary closer for the LP, A Day in the Life (which I discuss further here).

As I revisit the album today, I'm reminded of my huge Beatles fixation for many years as a tween and a teen. I collected everything I could get my hands on, and afford, that had to do with the Beatles. I still have my Beatle books on my shelves, and I do occasionally flip through The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, a vinyl record-sized softcover coffee table book from the late 1970's, which happens to sport a colourful Pepper-era photo of The Beatles (see photo above). 

My fondness for The Beatles will never fade, even if I only listen to Sgt. Pepper once every year or so. Hey, I got in all my heavy listening when I was younger, with much more time on my hands.